[maemo-community] Extras and Fremantle

[From: Tim Teulings]

Hallo!

>> I agree. I think this is a persuasive argument to adding freemantle as
>> a repository on maemo.
> 
> 
> A freemantle repository? The horor! I can only imagine what chaos that
> would bring.
> 
> How about adding Fremantle as a repository on maemo.org instead? :P

Some words as developer:

My plan/expectation for freemantle is:
* I get a dveelopment environment that can be installed in parallel to
existing SDKs.
and is at least API an possibly even feature complete (but not bug free).
* I get my application to compile locally in the dveelopment environment.
* I get my applications to run locally  in the development environment.
* I fix potential bugs in packaging.
* At this point I want to assure that my application builds using the
autobuilder
because that is the way to relase my applications at the point the new
devices with
freemantle are out. 
* I would be happy if my applications are already build using the
autobuilder and already
appear for freemantle under www.maemo.org/downloads if hardware is out. So
in this case
autobuilder and repository need only to be available a free week before
hardware is out
(because a few weeks are OK to fix build bugs that only appear using the
autobuilder).
* New version of the SDk migh generate iterations in this process but I
expect that
the first iteration will be hard and further iterations will only require
small fixes
 so starting early is OK for me.

The case is however different if I need external libraries that are not
part
of the SDK and the maintainer is different than me. In this case people
need an central
repository to exchance packages and build software on top of other
packages. Also it will
take (much) longer to get things running because there are likely more
iterations.

For this to work, SDK must be stable regarding features and API. But this
seems to be
assured with the next version coming.

So a central repository my be required soon, possibly now.

If we have a centeral repository we should use a autobuilder to increase
the quality
of parts and avoiding people pasting binary blobs into the repository.

This repository does not and should not apear at www.maemo.org/downloads
(nobody could make
use of that anyway). So an extras-devel repository should be enough.

I personally have no problem with someone deleting extras-devel binary
packages
and rebuilding all packages from their source packages if a new alpha/beta
SDk version appears.
I would this find even helpful. It would also be nice to have some report
or even a mail if
my stuff suddenly fails.

It would be cool if at the point of hardware available (e.g. I have
hardware to test my apckages
in reality) I have to chance to propergate from extras-devel to (than
created) extras
quickly - which should be no problem.

So please make a extras-devel repository and an autobuilder instance for
freemantle soon!

-- 
Gruß...
    Tim